SaFire Dance Inc. provided a range of circus entertainment at this year’s Stollery Children’s Christmas Gala. Some of the acts we booked included stilt walking, juggling, fire eating, fire dancing, contact juggling, balloon twisting and LED hula hooping! The evening included tons of prizes, silent auctions, entertainment, music, dinner and a live band! I think my favourite part of the night honestly though was when they were drawing the winner for a grand prize of a NEW CAR. Six people were on stage and each had a key with only one of the keys being able to unlock the door. Well… low and behold all six people tried and no one was able to open the door!! Everyone was shocked and confused.
They decided to allow each guest try their key again and sure enough one woman’s face was a mix of shock and horror as she realized that her key did in fact work! Can you imagine? You wouldn’t even be embarrassed that the key didn’t work the first time because you’d be so overjoyed with the fact that you won!
The event and decor were absolutely GORGEOUS and we look forward to working with the Stollery Children’s Hospital for next year’s gala event! The lovely gentlemen juggling and stilt walking is the oh so talented Nikolai Smith, an Edmonton based performer.

Circus Entertainment for an epic Circus Themed Event!

Just got home from the Stollery Children’s Hospital Snowflake Gala. The event was amazing! This year’s theme was Circus Carnival and they were keen to have a fire performer for the event. Safire Dance provided roving Fire Eating as well as a stage fire show before the evening’s dinner began. We also brought to the events festivities Juggling, LED Hula Hooping, stilt walking and balloon twisting! I’ll have some pictures and video up from the event in a few days.

One of the evening’s highlights for me was getting to perform inside a circus ring on the main stage! The decor at the Shaw Conference Center was phenomenal!

While attending aerial classes through FireFly Theatre I stayed with some friends in Edmonton. One of those friends is the lovely Amberlynn Walker; a talented freakshow performer from Insane-Entertainment. Amber is quite the creative muse, she’s always full of ideas and will have many projects on the go at once. She has many artistic skills including but not limited to painting, costume design, performance and photography. Here’s a few photos we captured the other day in her studio called The “Where” House. If you’d ever like to learn how to fire eat, her boyfriend Ryan Stock offers professional fire eating courses through their studio. Check out their website at Insane-Entertainment for more information, or watch his Facebook page Stock at Large to keep in touch about when another workshop will happen.

Fire eater about to eat fire

Fire eater breathing fire

Learning to be an aerialist is proving to be one my hardest challenges to date. For the past few weeks I’ve been up in Edmonton taking training from FireFly Theatre. I took several aerial classes from them years ago in 2008 when they were using space in a gymnastic studio and boy is their new studio space amazing!!

The classes have been a huge challenge for me both mentally and physically but thankfully all the teachers are spectacular and the energy there is really positive and uplifting. If I’m struggling with a move there is undoubtably always someone there to cheer me on. Everyone in each class is so supportive of each other and I’m sad to already be half way through the 6 week courses. I don’t really know what my plans are with aerial or if I’ll ever feel that I’m good enough to perform. I’m trying to live by my own advice and “love the process”; to focus on enjoying the experience of this new challenge without placing expectations on my progress.

If you ever get the desire to tone up and turn upside down, go see FireFly and sign up for some classes!

In October I provided roving and stage trade show entertainment for the Calgary Tattoo Festival. Here’s more photos from my show at this year’s Calgary Tattoo Festival. These images were captured by Elizabeth Joyal. In addition to fires shows I also provided roving stilt walking and roving hula hooping to help entertain guests on the trade show floor. My favorite was definitely the roving hula hooping as I was able to perform for people who were actually getting tattooed. Many of them were very thankful and smiled at the opportunity to enjoy a fun distraction from the physical feeling of being tattooed.

Trade Show Entertainment at the Calgary Tattoo Festival

Had a great time this Saturday providing Halloween party entertainment in Edmonton. The guests were all dressed up and excited to enjoy a night of dancing, music and entertainment. I provided roving stilt walking as guests arrived, a comedy show before dinner and roving contact juggling after dinner. For more information about our Halloween shows and characters be sure to also check out Safire’s performance video from Fright Nights in Vancouver.

I’ve been having a blast performing the past few weekend at Screamfest. Here’s some photos the lovely and talented AmberLynn Walker of Insane Entertainment snapped during one of my hoop performances. I’ve been providing fire shows on the Calgary Stampede main stage doing comedy acts with fire eating, fire poi, fire staff and three fire hoops.

Check out the photos below from one of my fire hoop sets. Thanks Amber!!

Screamfest Fire Dancer

I had a blast this weekend working Calgary’s Tattoo Festival. I provided a comedy fire show everyday on the mainstage with fire eating, fire poi and fire hooping. The show also included some audience participation and tattoo related stand up comedy. My favorite part of this event is that all you have to do is ask people one question: “Do you have a tattoo?” and they instantly they start stripping. Who wouldn’t love an event like that?!?

In addition to the stage show I did some roving Stilt Walking and Hula Hooping. I made an effort to interact with and politely distract those who were in the chair getting inked. Everyone was grateful for the happy distraction from the feeling of being tattooed. One gentleman while in the chair stated; “You should be at all the Tattoo Conventions! This is great!” I was happy to help out, I know the feeling of getting inked and having a good distraction can help make the time go by much faster.

For those of you who saw my stage show, I was joking about my “patriotic” tattoo. ; )

This year I’ll be performing at Screamfest in Calgary held on the Stampede grounds. The event includes haunted houses, spooky characters, unique and crazy entertainment. Fellow performers that will be doing shows all month include Ryan Stock and AmberLynn of Insane Entertainment. This duo performed on the Discovery Channel’s Guinea Pig and have been entertaining audiences all around the world with their sideshow performances. Shows will be Fridays and Saturday every weekend of October and the 26th to the 31st as well!

I was in Vegas last week to attend Photoshop World, an annual photography and Photoshop conference. It was an absolute blast!! I used to teach darkroom photography, digital photography and graphic design to high school students and I’ve missed that part of my life tremendously. Attending Photoshop World was a gift to myself to help rekindle my visual arts spirit. The entire event was filled with excellent workshops from the world’s best instructors, hilarious geeky inside jokes and other attendees that felt like long-time friends instantly. I made lots of friends, learned so many things, was inspired and am excited to go back again next year.

My new friend Sharon wrote a blog about the event and joined another fellow photographer and myself for an LED and fire photo shoot. Check out some of her photos and blog at Hell Ziggy.